The Burma Human Rights Network issued a report titled "No Escape ... Rohingya between Two Prisons", on the restrictions imposed on the Rohingya during the past decades, monitoring the cases of 1675 people from the Muslim Rohingya minority in Rakhine State who were arrested by the Myanmar authorities in different regions After they left Arakan, trying to find ways to live in other states and provinces in Myanmar, and some of those returning from Malaysia and intending to reach their villages in Arakan.
The network says in its report that "there is no escape for the Rohingya in Burma." While many of them fled to Bangladesh, and from there to other countries around the world, some decided to stay in Arakan despite the harsh living, security and health conditions, while some sought to change their lives by leaving Arakan. To other states in Myanmar.
Fleeing by road .. a scene repeated The
network has recorded the cases with their dates, numbers of Rohingya detained and the areas in which they were arrested between October 2016 and February 2020, tracking their news away from global attention, as the details of these arrests are taking place inside Myanmar, and are published In its local media and on the tongues of its officials, however, human rights network researchers believe that there are many other cases of arrest and prosecution of Rohingya that are not reported in the media nor are they officially announced.
The network says that "Burma (Myanmar) is using its legal system as a weapon against an ethnic religious group who was born and lived in this country for many generations, as part of the systematic methods of racial discrimination used to prosecute the Rohingya, and as long as these methods and tools exist, the Rohingya will continue to try to flee to Bangladesh, to live there. For an unknown period of time in the refugee camps, they are waiting for a moment for the world to assume its responsibility. "
Fleeing by sea and the report monitored the arrest of 2,200 Rohingya in Myanmar waters since 2015, and they are not treated as victims of smuggling and human trafficking networks, and some of them were released through camps prepared for the Rohingya in northern Rakhine State, after they were forced to accept the National Investigation Card. As foreigners - while others are still in detention.
Some of them were in refugee camps in Bangladesh, and when they sailed through the Myanmar waters, the Myanmar authorities arrested and detained them, and some of them were returned to Arakan. It is striking that in some cases the smugglers and their victims from the Rohingya who board their ships are being prosecuted under the same article and punishment, without objecting to that. One of the parliamentarians or local human rights organizations, the report says.
The return of 870 Rohingya to Arakan.
The Human Rights Network in Burma obtained two documents signed in April of this year and issued by the Office of the Minister of Labor, Immigration and Housing and the two general agents of the Ministry of Immigration and National Civil Registry. The two documents refer to the dropping of prison sentences against a group of 870 "Bengalis" Rohingya.
However, the network says that this decision, which came as part of a presidential pardon last April, was conditional on their return to the state of Arakan and their signing of a pledge not to try to leave their villages or camps in Arakan again, but it is striking that the two decisions were not published in the media because this will appear. A difference in the government narrative that wants to show the Rohingya have broken laws.
Listening and pronouncing the verdict in one day
According to the report of the Human Rights Network, whoever is arrested Rohingya outside Rakhine State, they will be tried by one of two laws, the first of which is: the Immigration Act of 1947 which was amended in 1990 as they are considered foreigners who entered the country illegally and may be imprisoned for a period of up to 5 Two years, and the second: the Myanmar Residents' Registration Act of 1949 under which they are considered foreigners without valid identification documents or residency and may be imprisoned for a period of up to two years.
The report says that, unlike other cases that take months in the courts, the cases related to the Rohingya who are arrested are swift. The trial takes place in one day and the verdict is issued on the same day sometimes, and the majority of them cannot or cannot search for a lawyer to speed up the procedures between their arrest. And their trial and imprisonment, or because there is no communication between them and their relatives and friends. Often the Rohingya are punished with the harshest penalties stipulated in the three aforementioned laws, and few are punished with short prison terms.
Gradual citizenship removal
According to the Human Rights Network in Burma, the Myanmar government began imposing restrictions on the Rohingya movement since 1992, whether they had previously issued documents or not, and the government adopted a policy of gradually stripping Rohingya citizenship.
In recent years, and based on a decision from the Ministry of Immigration and Population in 2015, the authorities began granting another card, the "National Verification Card", in which the name of the Rohingya is not proven by their original ethnicity, but rather they are described as "Bengali", and according to this card, the holder uses it temporarily pending completion. Dealing with his application for citizenship again, and it has no meaning in terms of citizenship rights, says Cho Win, director of the Human Rights Network in Burma, in his interview with Al Jazeera Net.
That is why the majority of Rohingya refused to accept this card, and a few reluctantly accepted it for reasons related to living conditions or security conditions, because it denies a historical fact that they have been there for generations, in addition to removing the name of their original nationality and using the term "Bengali" to emphasize that they are immigrants or foreigners, but Actually, the card does not represent any guarantee that a formal transaction will proceed legally for its holder to obtain citizenship during certain years, and in Chu Wen’s view, it is "the last endeavor to extract citizenship from the Rohingyans once and for all."
600,000 Rohingya in Arakan
due to successive military and security campaigns over the past decades, most of the Rohingya emigrated or deserted during the past decades, and according to the estimates of the Burma Human Rights Network, only about 600,000 Rohingya remain in Arakan today, and these are divided between the camps that they were forced into and forced into Living in it after the violence in 2012, and between the villages spread between Sitiwi or Akyab, the state capital, and north towards the border with Bangladesh.
Whoever lives in the camps is not allowed to go out except with permission and in very exceptional cases, as the camps are surrounded by barbed wire and tight security, and whoever lives in the villages faces another type of prison, he moves in a specific geographical area and does not leave it because he does not have any national document proving that he is a citizen Myanmar, and even someone who has a certain document does not travel outside his region just because he is a Rohingya or a Muslim.
Restrictions on movement mean the difficulty in obtaining work, the deprivation of students from studying in universities and institutes, the difficulty of accessing patients to hospitals, the difficulty in the movement of foodstuffs, medicines and commodities, and the medical and relief teams, especially in light of the prevailing war between the Arakan Army - which represents the Rikain Buddhist minority - And the Myanmar army, the Rohingya have found themselves between two fires in their lands.
To escape from life in this "big prison" in Rakhine State and because obtaining security clearances to go to other regions in Myanmar is almost impossible, they find smugglers and intermediaries in front of them to get them to Malaysia or Indonesia or to other states in Myanmar, and those may reach Malaysia or not. They pray after they fall into the hands of smuggling and human trafficking gangs.
As for those who move by road to the east to other states and provinces to seek livelihood or education, they pass through the Minbo or Goa mountain range, and there are several police and immigration checkpoints, which make Rohingya people take trucks in their attempt to flee, and testimonies given by some to the Human Rights Network indicate that The cost of leaving Arakan to Yangon or other Myanmar cities has risen from $ 714 to $ 1,785 per person.